4m x 3m Omlet pen, cube, new auto door still boxed and coop light

[Abbey Road Girl]

I have two apple trees, one a cooking apple and one an eating apple. The cooking apple is full of blossom (it's been by far the more fruitful of the two) but the other seems completely devoid of blossom this year.

 

Since apples are produced by cross pollination, I fear I will end up with no apples at all! I am tempted to try to go to the garden centre and buy another tree in bloom but I really don't have the space for it in my very small garden.

 

I know neighbours who have (or did have) a lovely apple tree or two. Don't know them that well but am tempted to ask if I can take some pollen with a soft artist's brush.

 

Any suggestions?

[Redwing]

If you have apple trees close by at your neighbours you should be fine, I don't think the trees need to be in that close proximity

[Guest]

bit early for apple blossom isn't it?

[Olly]

You shouldn't need to do anything, bees and other insects will do the job for you as long as there's a cross-pollinator somewhere in the area. It could just be that one of your trees is later than the other, though - I've got blossom on my 'eaters' but not on the 'cooker' yet.

[Abbey Road Girl]

Thanks everybody! The 'eater' has always been a bit behind and less prolific than the 'cooker' but this year doesn't seem to be producing any blossoms at all.

 

I will downgrade the crisis into a worry and see what happens!

[Guest]

we don't get blossom on ours until May/June-ish, in fact the leaves are only just coming out, oh well

 

Our cherries are blossoming though!

[bellekatz]

My new self pollinating eater is blossoming - in fact it's full of it for the size it is!!

[C&T]

My new self pollinating eater is blossoming - in fact it's full of it for the size it is!!

 

Ours too! Its brand new - and I can't wait to see if I do get any fruit of it this year (it claims it should fruit in it's first year on the label...!)

 

First year of apples - I have so many plans for the fruit I am sure I will not have nearly enough fruit to fulfil all my requirements!

[Patricia W]

We have a cox and a golden delicious. The golden delicious only really fruits every 2 years and the cox only ever has about 6 apples a year! But I notice that they both have blossom which looks almost ready to flower this year - which is unusual and early. The plum has just finished but there are usually a few weeks gap between the two types of fruit.

 

My bluebells are out also - and I'm sure they are early.

 

I'm just south of Oxford so I know we are often a week or so earlier than the north of the country, but I was expecting things would be later here as we had -12 not so very many weeks ago...

[Saronne]

we don't get blossom on ours until May/June-ish, in fact the leaves are only just coming out, oh well

 

Our cherries are blossoming though!

 

 

I think it depends on where you live and the variety of apple you've got. I'm in sunny (joke) Leicestershire and one of my apples is in blossom, another is on the verge and the third is still tightly closed. We've not had problems with cross pollination as there are apple trees dotted all around our village...

 

Love cherry blossom time, Poet, don't you?

 

 

Saronne x

[Matthew]

out katy apple tree is in full bloom

[chickenanne]

Neither of mine are flowering yet.

 

You can stop trees from producing once in 2 years by thinning the apples out in the year they do produce fruit. I would do this mid-late June - as some trees will naturally drop excess fruit in June , you don't want to thin the fruit out then the tree drop all the remaining fruit!

It happens becuase a lot of modern varieties are bred to be early fruiting and bear very heavy crops - they can be so prolific in their fruit-year that it takes them a year off to "recover" before they fruit again. Feeding them will help, too! I've heard fruit trees which get into this habit referred to as "going biennial"